What is the challenge zone?
The “Challenge Zone” is an area outside your comfort zone, sometimes known as the “Panic Zone”. The challenge zone forces you to enter the fear zone and if you persist, you move onto the learning zone. If you quit or give up, you will fall back into the comfort zone. There are a few variations to this model but this image from The Wealth Hike breaks down – into detail – the different zones we will go through as we push ourselves to improve. What happens in the challenge zone? You start feeling uncomfortable, stressed and you might even experience mild anxiety. Why cause yourself to feel such negative sentiments? For the simple reason that you cannot experience success without it.
To put things into perspective – As a kid, it is common to have started on a bicycle with 4 wheels (usually a detachable pair of training wheels). Without warning, your parents decided that you were “too old” for training wheels. The minute you get onto your now two-wheeled bicycle, you wobble, and the fear of falling surfaces. You might have cried out to have the wheels put back on; you might have persevered little by little until you managed to keep your feet on the peddles for a meter, then three, and ultimately, for a whole stretch. If you were the one that persevered, you would have experienced each zone by:
- Leaving your comfort zone – taking the training wheels off.
- Entering the challenge zone – putting your feet onto the peddles rather than on the ground.
- Starting to go through the learning zone – this is where you might have fallen down a few times.
- Succeeded in arriving at the growth zone – you are now able to travel on a two-wheeled bicycle.
Why is the challenge zone important for salespeople?
A recent study in 2018 proved that sales reps only spend 35.2% of their time selling. What about the other 64.8% of their time? As a salesperson, a lot of your time on the job is meant to be spent dealing with clients and prospects – either through sales pitches, cold calling, networking or so on. Why is it that 720 sales reps spend less than 50% of their time doing what they are meant to do? It is a direct result of falling into the comfort zone – where they find themselves doing non-sales related admin work, only calling up people that they have already built a rapport with as well as refusing to change and find new ways to sell their products or services. The result of this is a drop in productivity, less revenue generated, and targets that are seen as “beyond their reach”. No company wants this to happen!
How do you, as a salesperson, enter the challenge zone?
1. Start small.
How likely are you to snooze your alarm in the morning? Or, to leave your house without making the bed? If you have these habits – get rid of them. Starting your day by snoozing your alarm 59439 times will have you procrastinating the entire day. It is important to fix your mindset as soon as the day starts. Gear it towards productivity rather than procrastination. Then, when you start building good habits, congratulate yourself: you’ve gone straight ahead into the growth zone without much more than a few groggy mornings – nothing a good cup of coffee won’t fix. This will give you the morale boost you need to try more difficult tasks.
2. Pick up the phone.
For many salespeople, picking up the phone is a difficult task. The main reason that this happens is that their mindset is fixed to expect rejection. When do you believe that you will 99.9% be told “no” or that the customer is “not interested”, would you want to even pick up the phone? This mindset will automatically reduce your productivity and it will ensure that you never hit your targets. Change your mindset with this simple question: Do you get into your car already believing that you will get into an accident? I’m willing to bet that your answer is a firm, “of course not”. So why do you automatically assume you will be shot down? Try changing your mindset for just 60 minutes a day and see the difference it makes in your results – I guarantee you will be picking up the phone more than you have in the past week, month, or even year.
3. Go out and prospect.
Now that you’ve had a change in mindset – what do you do when you run out of people to call? Go out and meet new people – it’s as simple (and difficult) as that. If you find that your company’s database is insufficient, create your own by going to events where you are most likely to find people who will qualify as prospects. Of course, the actual qualification comes when you talk to them but your success rate will be a lot higher if you are surrounded by people who match your customer base. For example, if you are a training company focused on providing training to other companies with issues relating to sales, motivation, and mindset – you need to go to where all the key decision-makers are: at social gatherings, C-Suite level conferences, and so on. Where would you go based on who your customer base is?
How do you strive – and not just survive in the challenge zone?
1. Stay clear of your purpose – remind yourself of why you are in the challenge zone in the first place.
What are your goal, target, and aim? They all mean different things and are all equally important
- A goal: something you hope to achieve in the future.
- A target: a more exact result you want to achieve (usually monetary or in terms of KPI).
- An aim: what you want to achieve by doing something.
But, the most important of all is – what is your purpose?
- A purpose is what you want to achieve when you do something; the reasoning behind your plan of action.
As human beings, we need the motivation to keep going (we also need guidance, but that’s a different ballpark). On the other hand, we also need to rationalize why we do the things we do. If you’ve ever found yourself sitting at your desk and wondering, “Why am I here?” – it’s time for you to reevaluate and remind yourself of your purpose.
2. Stay up to date – know your product & prospects’ needs.
A vital method to ensure that you stay significantly ahead of the game is to make sure that you can counter every objection and rejection statement that is thrown at you. From “I’m not interested” to “I have something similar already”, know what makes your product or service different. From there, find out what your customer segment wants – their pain points, their needs, and their objections. One operative way is to introduce an industry-specific issue and the challenges that come with it only to tie in with how your product or service can provide an effective solution. It’s a simple, age-old method that works wonders.
3. Stay strong – mind over body.
When you are in the challenge zone, you are standing to gobsmack in the middle of failure and success. If you take a step forward, you enter the learning zone. If you find yourself overwhelmed, you will go back into the comfort zone – natural when you are faced with anxiety, frustration, stress, and fear. To stop yourself from regressing to old habits and going back into the comfort zone, use your purpose and your aim, target, or goal as a mental shield and barrier towards all negativity and unproductive thoughts. When your mindset is strong, your body will be able to keep up. Take Eliud Kipchoge, Serena Williams, our very own Pandelela Rinong, and other great athletes: their mindsets are strong enough to break world records and win world titles – sometimes, more than once. Arm yourself with a resilient mindset and change your sales results instantly.
